Within You and Without You
by Robert Frazier
We are born with 270 individual bones
We die with 60 less
This is not a human quandary
45 thousand millennia of development
From fish to forensic reconstructions
Your skeleton is just hard hard tissue
Able to be stripped down and
Reabsorbed by osteoclasts
Yet able to rebuild from harsh damage
This too lacks mystery
But bone marrow forms red blood
To truck oxygen along
The 9 zillion freeways of the flesh
So why do we worship the heart muscle
Why do we romanticize it
It only pumps platelets and cells
And when love breaks the heart
There is no power to heal the damage
Only a gloomy jukebox lament
Plus the salve of time
Copyright © 2020 by Robert Frazier